


Unfettered

by paperiuni



Series: Unwritten: Codas & Interludes [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Fluff, Lightwood Family, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s03e03: What Lies Beneath, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 22:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14223369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: Alec needs a moment to decompress after Maryse leaves. (A tiny coda for 3.03.)





	Unfettered

His mother smiles as she closes the door. Magnus smiles, cups his face, then turns away with an airy sigh. It's only then that Alec lets his gaze drop, past Magnus and the candlelit table to the floor.

Exile. De-runing. Three hours ago he thought the worst this dinner could bring would be the usual maternal interrogation of his life and his choices from every angle he hadn't thought to fortify. His parents' divorce had been a given for a while, an expected shock.

Not this. Not his mother being stripped of the only life she knows, the city and country and sacred purpose to which she's given everything. Often that everything has included her children.

He'd been braced to see her upset, tense, or in full mother-knows-best mode. Her stolid nobility in the face of all this—the fallout from crimes as old as Alec himself—raises a lump in his throat.

Magnus is clearing the dishes away idly, silver chinking on china as they pile themselves up at the flicks of his fingers. Alec doesn't know what to do with any of this: His mother will go into exile. She sat at the table and laughed and joked and only embarrassed him a little. She hugged Magnus and thanked him. If she has her way, she can't ever go to Idris again, can't stay in her family home, can't watch over her children.

He's bleeding emotion, into his stance, into his expression, pointed downward though it is. He muffles his link to Jace with a thought, not wanting to distract him from the hunt—or, more bitterly, not wanting to share this shaky moment of grief and relief. Not when things are so brittle between his brother and him.

"Alec?" Magnus glances over his shoulder. His stillness has given him away.

In this company, he doesn't have to hold together. It's just Magnus and the quiet loft around them, crowded with soft candle-thrown shadows.

Magnus makes a faint sound, surprise or indulgence, when Alec wraps him into a hug from behind, his head bent into Magnus's shoulder. "Well. This seems a touch dramatic, seeing how well the whole thing went. Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Alec breathes him in, the smell of the magic on him, like burnt sugar and yet not, fading now that he let the spell lapse. "Maybe. Should I let you go?"

"I'm sure the cleanup will keep." Magnus leans into him a fraction. "Penny for your thoughts? I could make it a more interesting coin, too."

"I think I don't deserve you," Alec mutters, spurred by Magnus's closeness and probably the too many glasses of wine he's had, even if most weren't downed in a single swallow. "I think I wanna march into Alicante and shake somebody until they overturn her sentence. I—I don't know how to be this happy and this sad at the same time."

He can't help but think, now, that his mother didn't only thank Magnus. That she made a request, too: _look after my boy, when I can't_.

He used to wish for that sometimes, so desperately it choked him: that for once his parents, who were his highest example and his harshest arbiters, would simply be a source of solace and comfort. The way Magnus has become, when Alec dares to let him.

"That's a lot of thoughts," he says when Magnus doesn't answer at once. "Sorry."

Magnus slots his hand into Alec's own, a slow, thoughtful motion. "You've done nothing to apologize for. Though if you'd told me a year ago that I'd be entertaining the thought that I may be fond of Maryse Lightwood, I'd have turned you into a toad."

"You didn't know me a year ago," Alec says, reasonably.

"A tragedy, to be sure." A sigh from Magnus ruffles Alec's hair. "I do know that it's a hard, brave choice, to face the consequences of your actions."

"I can't let this go, Magnus. I know she wants me to, and—it could undermine what we've tried to do here, with the cabinet, if the Council comes down hard on me for trying to help her. But she's my mother."

What he knows about honor, he learned from her. What he knows about mercy—well, the Clave isn't a big believer in it. That's been a more patchwork lesson, not least from the man in his arms.

"I know." Alec allows Magnus to lift their joined hands, and still stifles a start when Magnus kisses his knuckles. "If there's a way, we'll find it."

"We?" It's not even really a question, more a wondering exhalation that Alec buries into Magnus's shirt. "Yeah. I mean, we hosted a dinner for the only parent who we could conceivably invite to one. I guess we're a proper team now."

"Fighting a flying demon and purifying the ley lines didn't do it for you?" Laughter lies right under Magnus's words. "You're a hard man to win over, Alexander Lightwood."

"All you had to do was gate-crash my wedding."

"I _did_ have an invitation. I've got it tucked away somewhere."

Alec loses it a little at that, letting out a wobbling burst of laughter at the absurdity of Magnus keeping what must've been a highly offending article at the time. "I'm glad you did. Did I ever tell you that?"

"Not in so many words," Magnus says, gently, "but I got the gist of it."

"Good." Alec holds him closer, for a moment longer, until his worry is layered safely under the warm reassurance of Magnus's presence. "And I'm glad we did this, tonight. Whatever happens tomorrow."

Magnus squeezes his hand again, and it is answer enough.


End file.
